AND I ALWAYS THOUGHT Concert Celebrating Martin Bresnick To Be Performed At Kaufman Music Center
The special event will take place on Bresnick's 80th birthday - November 13th.
On Friday, November 13, 2026, at 7:30 p.m., Kaufman Music Center celebrates composer and teacher Martin Bresnick with the concert And I Always Thought at Merkin Hall in New York City. The occasion marks an extraordinary milestone: November 13 is Bresnick's 80th birthday, while in December he retires from the Yale School of Music after 50 years on the faculty, concluding one of the most influential teaching careers in contemporary American composition.
Widely admired as the teacher and mentor to countless innovative composers—including Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang—Martin Bresnick (born in New York City on November 13, 1946) has also built a distinguished body of work recognized with the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the inaugural Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
This evening at Merkin Hall places Bresnick's music center stage. A stellar roster of performers will present a program devoted entirely to his recent chamber works, including three New York premieres. (Jump to the program and performers.)
During Bresnick's tenure, Yale became an extraordinary incubator for new American composition. His students, including Sam Adams, Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Reena Esmail, Suzanne Farrin, Ted Hearne, Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, Kevin Puts, Arlene Sierra, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Joel Thompson, and many many others, have gone on to distinguished careers across contemporary classical music, opera, jazz, film, and television.
On the occasion of Bresnick's 80th birthday and retirement after half a century at Yale, And I Always Thought celebrates not only one of America's most distinctive composers, but also a teacher whose influence continues to resonate.
Tickets for the event can be purchased at the Kaufman Music Center's website.
